Awakening
by Bigoldfrog
Summary: When dreamers sleep a universe is born.
1. Chapter 1

Legal Note - Avatar, all names, locations, logos and trademarks created in James Cameron's Avatar universe, belong to James Cameron and the team who pulled off such majesty as to awaken a beleaguered soul, according to my heart - but Avatar, all names, locations, logos and trademarks are property of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Dune Entertainment LLC according to most laws.

Legal Note 2 - Though the non-human, non-Avatar character is not named truly, I have full permission from its creator to use it, should it be recognized, however I deem fit.

Dedicated this is, to my niece whose untamed heart could open; and in her held breath and tears, increased my Avatard island to two.

Part 1 - Crossing

In a large farmhouse of yellow bricks, red shingles and the misaligned proportions of the eighteenth century, Eno Bedouin lay fitfully on the hard surface of her single bed. Wind that hurled unchecked across countless acres of empty field battered against the walls and antiquated window of her room, causing it and all the old floorboards of the ancient dwelling to shift in a constant cacophony of spooky creaks. The moon was high and brought to life waves of swiftly flowing cloud that were nebulous reflections of the glimmering remnants of snow on the frozen ground. Out in the grim impenetrable shade of the woods at the other end of the property, a grim expanse that could lurk at any time in a child's imagination from having only seen it once, a lone wolf howled in sorrowful lament. It was a haunting sound emanating across a dead land lusting for Spring's life, embodying the young girl's desperate state.

With only antiquated baseboard heating her room bore a temperature to turn breath to mist. Her mattress had been slept on by two older brothers when they were her age, leaving it lumpy and bearing a wide valley down its centre. But these were not what kept her up when the red block numbers of her clock read 2:30 AM. The source of her restlessness, her wide eyes and occasional tear, a smile that would cross up into her cherubic cheeks and reveal one of her front teeth was missing, was something she had seen earlier that day, that had left her paralysed for many minutes after the finish of the last music transfused rolling credit. She'd witnessed a story of unrivalled beauty in every sense the word was designed for, of tall blue aliens with tails and large golden eyes, boundless phantasmagorical rainforest that glows with eery alluring radiance at the touch of night, floating mountains from which mist wreathed waterfalls drop, and a sapphire sky nestling a gigantic cyclopean planet. In this tale there had been so many things to experience and ponder; love and war and redemption, the inimitable beginning when a tribal voice began to sing, the impossible odds set against romance occurring between unknowing truly far flung hearts and then remaining entwined each second after embrace; yet managing, somehow, impossibly, to do so to the happy ending that hinted at red and very sad tomorrows.

With every tremble of her lips, Eno didn't know what to think. She both loved and feared this complete sense of overwhelming discovery and loss of control that permeated her through to an unsavoury hour that would see her in trouble if she were found awake. Her off white sheets with their cartoon caricatures of friendly dinosaurs were mostly tossed from her bed to drape messily against the blue fabric of her carpet. Under a thin comforter and pink bedgown she'd gotten for a birthday, her legs were sprawled wide at uncomfortable angles, bloodshot eyes continued to stare at the centuries old ceiling and sweat poured from her forehead and temples despite the blowing cold of the early Spring air seeping into her room. Her heart beat in spastic fits at thoughts of cyan faces and clandestine actions, flying with reckless abandon and finding freedom. At times it hammered so hard pain crept literally from her chest. She was beginning to become terrified, her small calloused farmgirl's fingers bunched until her knuckles whitened to bone and she dared the thought of waking her mother, or someone, to ask what was happening.

No one ever talked to her about this sort of thing occurring to them, no one other than her crazy uncle really ever talked about the story she saw either.

Kicking the clinging comforter from her body, Eno leaped down to the soft age worn carpet and walked out into the second floor hallway. Normally such nights of haunting groans and peculiar noises from all over the house frightened her so much she would not venture out, even when her finger had been cut agonizingly by a page of the Sherlock Holmes adventure she'd once been reading. Not this night. She barely noticed the voices of the straining wood, she didn't remember stories from family members about all the farm hands that had died here over the many, many years. Emblazoned across the hazel of her irises was an image of a stairway to heaven, where one warrior moves another step to free himself, and his to-be pairbond descends a step closer to falling in love. That warrior who'd climbed Iknimaya, the stairway to heaven, had faced great challenge without resorting to blunt violence and underhanded practices. And neither had the other, Eno's new idol, a warrior and a princess named Neytiri. It was unquestionably her favourite part as she'd told her uncle earlier, who now slept in the haunted basement.

At the top of the slightly uneven staircase leading downward into windowless true darkness, Eno stood with her hand on the globule nub of the gothic bannister.

"Last time I snuck down to see you.." She murmured to herself, instinctively abating her speech. Her mother was sleep talking again. But it was difficult to tell when it was this funny occurrence, or when the woman had heard something with her acutely perceptive ears. ".. your sleeping bag was on the floor and you didn't have any clothes on." She finished with a distasteful look stamped on her face.

Instead of traversing the yawning house to the even older and damaged underground sections, Eno instead made her steady way to the second floor bathroom. There she shut the door noiselessly by holding the knob fully rotated and easing the bolt into its weary latch. She clicked on the small metal lamp over the bathtub that her mother used to read by, because the main light also brought to life the clamorous ceiling fan. Normally the thrill of potentially getting caught even for something as trivial as staying up too late could peek adrenalin within her and blot out most other rational thoughts. Born on visions of another world her adrenalin was already peeked and ceaseless, she was floating violently downriver in it.

Rubbing sleep from her ducts, Eno stepped upon an elevating wide flat wooden block and looked in the mirror over the double sink. In its reflecting confines stood the same person she always saw, a woman no-one else ever seemed to see, except her crazy uncle. Staring back at her was the frizzy dark haired heroine with high cheekbones and a button nose, a shaker of continents and changer of futures, a wielder of great power and beauty, a person who'd never steal like lawyers nor lie like politicians, who would never, ever visit her niece a few times a year and complain she was 'too tired' to play outside, as her extended family always did, except her crazy uncle.

As she watched herself in the rectangular streak marked mirror, a glossy sheen began to form over the hazel of her eyes. Her lips shuddered and the tempo of her small breaths increased, spurred by another fantasy driven pounding of her heart. Her whole expression blanched and she rubbed a sliding tear from her cheek, while her other shaking hand turned a tarnished steel handle, bringing cold water into the sink. With desperate verve she splashed the liquid across her face quietly, doing so again and again and again until the pain from chilled nerves overrode the loss she experienced every time a blink ended, the emerald leaves disappeared and reality reasserted itself.

Too quickly the emotional malady returned, the vision was again imbued, and lost. She peered up to gape once more at her reflected self in exhausted surrender, this time leaving her left hand under the icy stream to find solace in agony. She almost screamed at what she saw, stifling the noise with a hard bite to her bottom lip.

Eno was not alone.

In the mirror, revealing behind her the room with its cracked tiles and numerous bath soaps, stood a very tall, acutely skinny strange being. Not physically pretty and mostly naked like Na'vi, but with leathery withered grey skin, a peculiar small nose that reminded her of Darth Vader, immense round eyes wide-set and silver in both colour and luminance, prominent cheeks and chin on a completely bald head. His ill conceived decorum was a moth eaten peasant's robe that appeared to be made of burlap, bound at the waist with a cord of thick twine. Though this being was ugly, almost scary; as his arms that were revealed from the elbow down and his chest that showed through the deep V of his clothing were skeletal in emaciation; his cracked very thin lipped smile was kind, and his expression intensely warm.

"Bastion!" Eno eked in joy, wheeling about to throw her arms around his robed hips, knocking the half full plastic cup she'd been drinking from to the floor.

The being laughed with a rumbling whispery mirth, a noise as scary, unique and wonderful as the thing that made it.

Before her arms found their mark, she recoiled as the drinking device clattered noisily against the floor.

"Oh no-" She moaned.

"It is ok." His ponderous voice was like a booming whisper, a current of speech both quiet, yet infinitely easy to discern. Each syllable was collected and slow, the gentle passing of sand over mountains through the endless march of aeons.

"But.."

Beyond the antiquated doorway and another identical to it leading into the master bedroom, her mother continued to talk with someone in her head, and from her side came a tiny, long winded snore. Both parents slept.

"You could start singing and they won't hear you, I blocked the noise." Bastion hushed.

"Oh-" Eno finished the hug, holding tight against the abrasive fabric and the unyielding muscle beneath. "I'm so glad you are here.. I-.. I.." But she didn't finished her sentence.

Bastion returned the gesture as best he could, reaching down with a long arm and pressing against her narrow back. After they enjoyed a shared breath he gently pushed her away, using the cheering distraction of reversing the flow of water back into the cup and the cup returning to the counter top.

"What troubles you brave one?" The being asked, drawing the Bedouin child over and onto a chair made of rounded wooden timbres and a straw seat. As she composed a reply he sat awkwardly on the soap stained floor so as to not stare nearly strait down at her. Eno watched, and began to subtly joy. Under the orange glow of the weak reading lamp, he appeared half human and even carefree and clumsy, instead of the usual purely lost in far off troubling thought.

"..I saw this movie today, it was amazing- it was beyond amazing!" She finally spoke.

"Avatar." Bastion intoned.

"Yeah!- Wait, how'd you know- silly me, of course you knew; you know everything."

"No, not even remotely close."

"Wha-.." Eno perplexed at the counter-intuitive idea. Everything Bastion did belied that he was no less than a god, if a strange and easily distracted one; omnipotent and all knowing.

"To know truly everything is of such impossible paradox even I cannot fathom the power to possess it." Bastion said without hint of lecture.

"You knew I watched Avatar today." Eno grabbed the being's closer hand, running her comparatively smooth calloused farmgirl's digits over the gnarled, toughened flesh of his of his relatively monstrous appendage.

"I was talking with your lousy uncle earlier." Bastion said.

"He knows you exist?"

"Yes, he helped create me. It was his idiotic idea that I be represented with such cadaverous repulsion."

Eno giggled. "I think you're cute."

The strange sensations Bastion's hairless unreal skin gave off was fascinating to Eno, ticklish as well whenever she touched the fingertips.

"So.. I can't get certain things from Avatar out of my head." Eno nearly hummed. "The beauty, the trees and the bushes, even the animals all glow at night and radiate during the day; it's so much.. just remembering it takes my breath away. These Na'vi people- have you seen Avatar?"

Bastion huffed a laugh. "I tread the dream world openly. I have seen of it, if not it directly like you."

"Good.. I guess." Eno scrunched her cheek and nose as she often did at his odd comments and practice of thinking. "You know what I'm talking about anyways. The Na'vi are so beautiful, at least the girls are, the men are a bit weird.. kinda' like you."

"Blame your uncle."

"He's funny- anyways, the Na'vi are brave, they live in relative harmony with each other and their surroundings. They spend time with their kids, they don't argue over who's going to do dishes or take their daughter to karate. They leap from high branches and hunt great wild beasts without the slightest fear; both men and women! The way they talk makes them seem like simpletons, but I don't think so." Eno languished a moment, staring at his splayed, horribly old hand.

"Why don't you think so?" Bastion asked.

Eno chewed on the inward edge of her lip. "..I just don't. Maybe if I watched it when I was older I'd think otherwise, but- old people aren't so smart, even if they pretend to be.- When Mom says 'It's just a movie' she never wants to engage in the Socratic method over why- she just changes the subject. Others at school-"

"Brave one, I do not deride. I only wanted to know what you thought."

"Right..." Eno sulked unabated. She was perturbed, bunching the small muscles in her jaw. "Don't you already know what I think?"

"No." Bastion shook his head. "I never peer into a person's mind. I would die of fright most of the time.. Especially in regards to a certain family member of yours who right now slumbers in the basement."

Eno restrained a flicker of bemusement, still sitting upset. "They all like stupid movies with rattling machine guns wielded single handed and romantic comedies that never run the risk of ever being thought about."

"Why does he choose to sleep down there when he visits? I think he's missing a few marbles, rather, with all my power I know your uncle is missing many, many marbles." Bastion continued in as playful a manner as a scratched wheeze could be.

Eno perked, rekindling her infectious flame.

"Perhaps I will ask again later, when thoughts of presumptuous individuals aren't so hot in your head."

"Ok... So.. Where was I?" She lulled.

"You were telling me of this world you saw."

"..Yeah! The Na'vi are great, but they really don't know what to do with humans. Not nice humans, but mostly narrow sighted greedy ones with no limit to their capacity for wrongdoing and don't care about the Na'vi because the Na'vi aren't just like them. And.." Again that moisture that came and went all night, welled from the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over and proclaim just how intensely moved she was. She fought with steadfast resolve against embodying the crybaby people called her. "..Well each time I see in my head Jake or Neytiri hunting, laughing, avoiding toruk trying to eat them, especially their journey together and how most Na'vi must endure similar hardships on Pandora, I remember what happens."

Eno stopped, blinking in a staccato of repetitions and turning aside. She reached her free hand up, but before it could swipe, a touch as soft a cat's nuzzle rubbed away the drop that had begun its descent.

"These things sound amazing, even for the dream world. Why cry?" Bastion asked.

"Because there is so much dying, and screaming and crying.. and of people I really didn't want it to happen to. Entire families are crushed or blown up, Neytiri thinks Jake betrayed her with his ignorance and..."

Bastion too had taken on a more sorrowful visage, folds of skin brimming up to cover the lower portion of his large eyes. "Terrible."

"It's not just.. just that" Eno quarrelled with the want to whimper, to press the escape button and wallow in the unchecked emotions she'd never before encountered. "It's that tomorrow or the next day or next week, it will be like it was never sad and it didn't really matter. Everyone doesn't care, even Mom and Dad tell me I shouldn't care so much, 'it's just a movie', and Jacob laughed when pernicious lead turned Na'vi into rain.. I wish it wasn't sad. I wish it had been happy ever after and no one died to stupid humans. Then in ignorance I could be blissful.. I wish.."

With her head slightly juddering, she cut short her plea. Large hazel met even larger silver, transfixed in the sudden potentiality they offered.

"Wish what you will." Bastion said, lifting her chin with a delicate finger.

"I wish I could go there."

In this strangest of beings there was sudden recognition, and distaste of it. "..To Alpha Centauri?.. It's just a lifeless system in this universe-"

"No. To James Cameron's universe, to Pandora. I wish I could go there and change things for the better. Happy ending- real happy ending with no possibility of more bad stuff." Conjoining with the distress a stubborn vigilance spawned from her. Eno pulled her hands away and crossed the bare skin of her arms.

"And how would you change things there? You cannot even breathe the local air-"

Eno stood. "You know what I mean! Make it so I can breathe, and anything that needs changing you can do. Ok?"

"To every action, even the most minute and innocent, there are consequences." An expeditiously, intensely wary Bastion rose to his full height, only slouching slightly to avoid smacking his bald head against the ceiling.

"So? We've been on adventures before."

"Adventures in universes of my making; expendable. This will be different, gravely different."

"I don't care! I don't care.. I want it happy. I'll be extra careful. We'll figure things out; take me there."

"Be wary with your whims, for the sake of others." The extraplanar being's seriousness of uncounted ages exuded from his whisper as he reached to her cheek and kept firm contact from eye to eye.

"I will.. I've learned lots from other times, promise.." Eno laid her hand atop his, trapping the cold otherworldly digits there. "please.."

Her Bastion grasped her forehead with an engulfing palm in a gesture of slothful, infinite purpose. The weight of entire worlds murmured as noise barely heard in the moment his papery lids closed to shut. "..As you wish." His voice from nowhere and all directions came.

From the wind battered washroom with the house's only bathtub and Theodore the wolf spider that makes a nest in the upper right hand corner of the window every year, the temperature skyrocketed to well past comfortable and bright blazing light blinded Eno.

"Ahh!.." She half eked.

All was white and featureless, every sense rejected the spatial merging and cleansing that it could only know as truly nothing. Before her vision recovered from its retinal bleaching, she knew something was definitely, entirely different. Noises she'd never heard before drove into her a distinct idea of alien magnificence; squawks of avian more exotic than even the tucan and parrot, growls of beasts stalking somewhere through nearby bush, a distant trumpeting of fauna terribly large, the sway of wood that groaned oddly before a gathering breeze. Eno's eyes flashed back open as excitement propelled her pulse well past any healthy limit. She squinted her lids, already grinning, elated, jumping up for unchecked joy.

What was thought to be a dream intangible, a universe beyond reach, now surrounded her and suffused her every cell with a certain inimitable beauty, like the first cough of a resuscitated child.

"Whoa!" She cried as she jumped. Eno had not realized she had been standing so precariously on a high moss and fern covered branch. Scores of meters below her inverted form was a swiftly churning riverbed thickly permeated with giant roots. In mid air she floated, waving her arms about resulting in her body rotating a misshapen circle. Within every direction verdant life which no human of her universe, save one, had ever seen so closely did thrive, bloom and interweave with itself. Flowers with curiously shaped yellow-pink petals and swarms of orange segmented insects buzzing about over them, grew along with trees of every describable gnarl, point and height, and gave way to chaparral with fronds that she recognized and that were so massive each leaf was larger than three of her.

Being here was her wish, and Eno did believe her Bastion was godlike, yet it seemed beyond the description of any notion of impossible power that she be where she was. She consciously blinked as she did to dissipate a nightmare, yet as the lids retreated the dreamscape remained resolutely unfurled before her. Possibility unlimited thickly permeated the humid air.

Eno both cried and laughed. "Pandora!"


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2 - Sunset the beauty, the doom

"You did it!" Eno erupted jubilantly, upside down. Though her dark auburn hair hung freely towards distant gurgling river water, somehow the loose flow of her faded nightgown defied gravity.

"As did you, it was your wish." Bastion said from behind her, his scratched whispery voice beaming as much positive energy as Alpha Centauri A above.

"That didn't take any effort.. thank you so much.." Eno said.

"Neither was jumping universes for me, or altering laws between them."

"Oh of course." Eno joked.

The primordial wilds in emeralds to olives, purple, red and hues she'd not known names for, the shifting of fern and vine choked flora by mysterious and wonderful beasts that were prey for her imagination, the silhouettes of clusters of ikran flying off to the jungle shrouded south; it had left her speechless, giggling away welling droplets from her effulgent eyes. She felt like she would cry once more, until she spun slothfully enough to see an entirely distracted Bastion on the high branch she'd just leaped from. The tall, gaunt and strange grey-skinned being still stood there so out of place with his distasteful robe that went uneffected by the wind, admiring her at the expense of all the beauty about them. The ever ridiculous sight of him and the strange fatherly fixation he always seemed to bear only added to her unbridled reaction.

"We're here! We're actually here! Thank you!" She exclaimed.

"Perhaps.." Bastion mumbled, only haphazardly holding her gaze. After a moment's respite from talk and alleviation of sensual overstimulation, where the extraplanar rara avis too took in the magnificent and bizarre surroundings with a wide slow sweep of his ugly head, he responded. "Who.. dreams this?"

"This is only scratching the surface."

He turned to her. "Breathtaking, but it is your mirth that makes it special for one like me."

"Hunh?"

"An open heart is such a rarity and so dear as I could never wholly convey to you."

In the midst of such joy as she felt, the unseeming perplexity of what he was trying to say was making her giddy. "Uh, ok.." Eno laughed.

"..Tis in the heart that the mind finds its purpose. All my power would be pointless without it."

She shook her head. "Pfff. You have some of uncle's personality too now that I see it- Hey! Bring him here-.. after you set me down."

In a timespace too short for her mind to register they were both next to that riverbank below, on a large lavender moss slicked rock jutting out into the water's flow. It was much cooler there, with the deep shade afforded by dense forest, and the spray washing off the tributary in a constant billowy mist.

After ensuring that she had secure footing she looked up.

"Wha.. whoah." Eno said, an emittance of scarce force.

For several seconds she was caught and stilled by the music of the living, breathing forest that cradled her in its womb, more like a singular living entity than a series of them. It was a single entity the Bedouin child remembered, and through such a monocle she witnessed the mighty woodland as the same uniqueness, strength and intense vulnerability as she had a certain stars crossed duo.

She tersely exhaled, the ramifications of the events, peoples, worlds, all the actions and intermingled potentialities, the dreams being born and those dashed, the torture she'd suffered all night and the sheer rapture of it; as the immaculate surrounding hit her with concussive force, so did the sudden weight of responsibility felt. Dilated hazel reflected a world of rich life, and great peril. Her nebulous fear was not the claws and teeth here, but something without name save 'Its just a movie' that quashed the breathing of her unbridled will to hold the intangible. She blinked and the difficult memories of a world seen lapsed into the recognition of existing in it.

Eno flashed a glance at her Bastion, but he wasn't paying her much heed, instead scanning a pair of bejewelled insectoids fighting on a rotten log.

Eno sniffed once more, giggled and disregarded the rearing of lousy discomfiture.

"When you're done doing.. whatever, bring uncle here." She said.

Trying to scrutinize her surroundings, Eno was quickly distracted by the complexities of small anenomies waving in the current, the exposed ribcage of some nameless gargantuan animal slicing out of the purple and green weedy bottom like spokes, the technicoloured fist sized fish harbouring in the lee offered by the rock she stood on, and a larger fish that bore a wide upturned maw akin to a deep, humorous frown. Thus far the skiddish colourful sword shaped fish hadn't noticed the stealthy camouflaged predator, or the two enormous newcomers who materialized from nothing.

"Are you sure you want him here? He might try something.. silly." Bastion asked.

"Who?.. Uncle-oh.. Yeah.. You're right, he's always up to somethin- Hey!" Eno roared. Her hand-me-down gown had disappeared, and in its place was peculiar khaki clothing; pants that bulged out at the thighs and a button up shirt, along with high black leather boots and a khaki coloured chinstrap-toting helmet that weighed at least five pounds. "What the hell is this?"

"A nightgown is not an item to be caught in in this locale. I've outfitted you with what European explorers wore when mucking about in Africa."

"I don't want this crap! I'll sweat buckets in no time and this helmet is too heavy- did they have no necks back then?.."

With a flash of mud churning movement the reed coloured fish with long form-breaking tendrils hanging from its fat midsection lunged after the red, blue and yellow striped ones; driving them out into the stream as it sought to slake its appetite.

"Cool!.. That's not so much different from earth, with rockfish off the coasts of Australia- but much cooler. Anyways, give me nice clothes."

Gone were the age benighted trappings, and in their place was an outfit identical to what the scientist avatars wore in the initial throws of the movie.

"Better... Alright let's make use of our time, what time - date is it right now?" Eno asked, falling to her knees and hands.

Bastion briefly smiled inwardly.

Eno sensed, then noticed his bemused lustre. "What?"

"Nothing.. It is approximately five minutes before the valkyrie carrying Jake Sully lands at Hell's Gate."

"Isn't a valkyrie the name of an angel or something?" Eno asked, reaching her hand into the placid cool water behind the rock. Her outstretched fingertip reached as far as it possibly could to touch the lone remaining rainbow fish that still didn't seem to pay her any regard.

"It is also the class identity of vertical takeoff orbital launch shuttle, but you already deduced most of that."

"I thought you.." Eno reached yet further, thrusting her shoulder forward, dipping her whole arm up past the beige sleeve into the river. ".. didn't read minds."

"I don't. I too am versed in deduction."

"Well-" She finally made contact with the fish, sparking it into frightened life to whip at lightning speed out into the current, slicing her hand with spines on its tail as it sped off. The movement was so sudden and surprising that when Eno tried to draw back defensively, she only managed to upend herself with a massive splash into that tranquil pool.

Before she could come up for air, or to scream in fright at lurking predators or complain that the robed protector didn't stop her fall, they were both standing on a baking landing strip she instantly knew, entirely dry and all wounds dressed.

An areal vehicle vastly larger than any aeroplane she'd ever witnessed had just reached zero horizontal velocity and now began lowering itself on a vertical trajectory with its deafening wing mounted turbines. Even at its great height, the air it jolted whipped her hair and clothes violently about, threatening to spill her over as it began to near.

"Ee!-"

It hadn't dropped another centimetre before the blowing wind as well as the painful boom of its engines stopped their searing assault, passing around the two in an almost visible slipstream.

"What the-" Eno yelled. It took her a small moment to recognize her vicinity's immediate amicability. Then with meteoric exuberance she tumbled to felicity; she was truly at the beginning of the grandest of tales! Her jaw fell helplessly open as a cherubic face played off its surroundings, the mind that moved it having forgot entirely her episode in the river. Forming a bulwark against the wilds of the planet was a pentagonal perimeter chain link fence encompassing a compound several kilometers in size, defence towers at each corner with other intimidating multi-barelled gun emplacements every two hundred fifty meters. The impregnable main complex loomed to her right, the smoke belching ruination of the mining pits in the other direction, and people in soldier's uniforms, exo-masks and sometimes bipedal or wheeled machines all milled betwixt the two.

"This is it, it's all about to begin.." Eno whispered. The heart pounding sense of an unknown future that had leaped all throughout her as an angelic voice tolled while the credits rolled and a jungle passed by beneath, found the hope of closure. Jake was at the inaugural step, but with him now was a changer of ways, a creature to warp universes.

This raw potential spliced with the wonder that exuded from every detail of her surroundings, magnifying. As despite the repugnance of the place, everything was large, fantastic and set with a mind blowing thorough attention. It was an interlude, a portal to a larger world where dream and reality meet. "Uh.." She raised her mostly bare arm and pointed at the amassed waiting party of soldiers that stood only a stone's throw away. "Can't they see us?"

"They will only become aware of you if you directly interact with them, just like that fish. Except they have guns, not exposed spines."

She blinked a few times, looking upon her forefinger wrapped in porous gauz. "You'd let them kill me!.. Would I really die here?"

The pewter of Bastion's round orbs lost their focus a moment. His mouth worked in mumbles of double speech she wasn't ever sure if she was meant to hear. "Interceding - intervention.. calamitous... paradox.. dues ex machina.. wrong" He did do this sometimes, but it no longer scared her. "..Kill you; emotionally I could never allow it, but.. .." He minutely turned his head back and forth in small jerks, as if dislodging a distasteful thought.

"But what?"

His eyes readjusted. Bastion knelt after a trice, flicking a lock from her rounded cheek. "No. I could not allow it to happen, ever. But.. Eywa would not be happy if I started atomizing her guests, let alone her-"

"You!- You, .." Realization struck Eno, blanketing her countenance in explosive expression. "Talking with her?" She squeeked

"Yes." Bastion half chuckled.

"What is she saying?"

"Well.." He mused dramatically. "Forty two."

"What! C'mon, that joke is so lame! What is she saying, c'mon tell me. Please.."

"As is impossible to discern the true meaning of that infamous answer, so too would be me translating the talk of Eywa to contemporary English."

"Fine.." Eno couldn't find the means to pout, she was grossly too happy. "Oh, look!" She said and pointed. The ramp of the landed shuttle was lowering, about to divulge its contents, including one wheelchair bound man who would change everything.

Bastion stood. "As for what happens here brave one, this is not what you've had before. This is no choose your own adventure, where you can flip back to the damning page to find a more pleasing route."

"Action equals reaction, Newtonian thermodynamics." Eco recited, wholly distracted.

"A little bit, yes. Think of event occurrence and time like trying to get anything from your Mom or Dad; they only work together, if loosely."

Sound reasserted itself, the hustle and clanks of extra solar colony one came in as a mottled, broken orchestra. Eno looked away, only maintaining a perfunctory enough observation of the strange being to notice a very thin lipped smile caress his face as his sparkling silver orbs consumed a visually awesome display. Quickly she misrecollected this reaction of his as she covered her repulsed, pinched nose.

"It stinks like a construction site."

"My apologies." Bastion said.

The pungent reek of chemical fumes, exhaust and baking machine grease disappeared from her olfactories.

"Might I suggest increasing the usual ratio of learning to wishing by orders of magnitude..." Bastion began one of his rambling episodes.

Eno put her fists to her sides and concentrated with tunnel like intensity, blocking his incessant nagging out. "What to do.. Smaller the change, the better right?" She said quietly to herself. Despite now being here, at this climatic and efficacious instant, all the inner turmoil of having loved and lost and ending up on a bittersweet precipitous in finale, renewed its gnawing vigour. Na'vi, including her hero, were out there beyond these walls, innocuous.

"These aren't the most dastardly bad guys I've ever seen." Bastion remarked, his whisper of a voice effortlessly penetrating the noisome jumble.

"Bad guys?.." Eno lost her train of thought as she considered the odd comment, then dislodged it from import as her Bastion was prone to making such remarks. "They're only sorta' bad guys. Shouldn't you know that already 'cause they're under your control?" Eno asked without the passion of caring.

She gently lifted his long fingered appendage from her shoulder and took her first few steps towards the lowered ramp.

"This isn't my universe, actually.."

"Maybe I need to see more before knowing what to change.." Eno postulated, her hand on her chin and her attention most certainly not on the long winded Bastion.

"...Perception is reality, that is where knowing stops. This world is the product of your awesomely potent heart, the creation of a true genius' love affair, and only, merely a plane hopping on my part. This is not my universe, not my control, nor my future." Bastion's maundering hit her once more.

"Hunh?.. The future has to be yours, what?"

"To know the future is to change it. You've read Frank Herbert's Dune, you should have a good grasp of its nuances."

Soldiers hiding their awe as well as their trepidation with little talent tramped out of the Valkyrie on the double while a commanding officer barked edicts at them. "..Go directly to the base. Do not stop."

"To even know the now is to change it." Bastion said, watching the exeunting humans just as Eno did.

"I know- uncle likes to prattle on about quantum physics. Quick, take me over there, I want to see Jake's reaction." She said.

Just off to the left of the sturdy fastness of the landing ramp they suddenly apparated. Down it rolled a devilishly handsome marine unremittingly stalwart in disposition, tumultuous of inward drive from that moment onward, as innocent to the many vast and entangled powers at work around him as he was commander of his destiny. The man of a different world marvelled at the sight before him, not intimidated in the least at his impediment on the alien landscape.

"Just like-.. such humble beginnings.." The extraplanar entity said. Eno flicked her glance at him to catch a visage that matched in temperament his spoken phrase steeped in long and multitudous memory. The sadness that sometimes crept into her Bastion when the being thought she couldn't see him, was there now.

"..He's the protagonist in the movie- How disadvantageously astir would it be to make him be able to walk?" She said.

As if wrenched from an environment melding trance, the being took a noticeable yet tiny moment to respond. "You don't think he'd be more than mildly surprised that suddenly his L2 and L3 vertebra were not crushed?"

Eno stopped trekking alongside the marine. "Well-.. I suppose altering his memory.. and everyone who's known him to be in a wheelchair, or fabricating a different past-.. never mind, forget it. He gets to run around soon enough."

"An excellent decision made despite the tremendous affection you have for him." Bastion said as they recommenced their forward movement, now behind Jake Sully.

"Hey, I like him- but not in that way; I don't do silly movie crushes.. but then he's right here- anyways, I don't know, it's just that Jake doesn't seem to hile the self aggrandizing idea of power. You know.. like most hero dudes. It's like.." Eno caressed her chin. "he's just a ball of emotions reacting to everything."

"He strikes a soft spot in you, that is what allowed you to be so sad?" Bastion asked.

"Yeah.." Eno's voice was laden with a premonition of mourning. "Sorta', tough to explain. It's not all sad here, most of it isn't, most of it is wonderful. Pro'lly why the sorrow bites so deep.."

"If.." The otherworldly immortal battled for words, appreciably distrusting their effect. "Perhaps... No, if-.."

"What? Out with it."

"How do you plan on collecting information for your wishes; follow this man around?"

Eno's expression halted, along with her mind, and reset. "We'll see."

"Hey," Came from ahead, the voice of one musclebound brute in a form fitting olive shirt as he spoke to his even larger companion. "check it out; meals on wheels." He referred with such contempt to Jake.

"That is just wrong." The larger chap retorted in agreement with a downward glance.

"Those guys! Yep, they're bad guys. You can kill 'em." Eno said.

Bastion raised his hands like a flamboyant magician, a manoeuvre Eno suspected he only did to give her a chance to think. "I don't think Eywa will like this-"

"Hmm?..- Wait!.. Oooooo..." Eno ground taught fists into resilient thighs as her button nose and whole face blanched. "'But that would cause all sorts of problems, and make 'Eywa angry'." She poorly imitated the extra dimensional being.

"Very angry, she'd probably never speak to me again."

"Fine, but you need to do something- and Wainfleet, that asshole- s'cuze my language, he really needs something done to him."

"He strikes a particular nerve?"

"Yes. He gets off in killing animals and Na'vi."

The two brutish soldiers began meandering off, cussing and jawing machismo derision at the passing protagonist.

"Would doing anything.. to them alleviate the sorrow I've yet to see hidden in this beauty?" As Bastion referred to the jarheads Eno caught the definite, if only slight, touch of anger.

"I dunno! Quick, do something, anything, while Jake is around to see it."

"Perhaps something particularly ineffectual.." The being hesitated, his voice quiet.

"Now, c'mon!.."

The being's shoulders shrugged at the furthering of insults muttered between the soldiers at Jake. "As you wish."

From directly between the two shaven headed ruffians an immense blast of stench filled flatulence erupted. As neither soldier was the perpetrator of the noise, they each thought the other responsible, and passing Jake believed it was one of them.

Eno laughed uproariously. "Per-" She keeled over in mirth as the two blamed each other with revolted expressions upon the first rotten-egg permeated whiff that somehow penetrated the filters of their masks, followed by silent proclamations of innocence.

Jake almost cast a small smile, but was unceremoniously flabbergasted by a passing gargantuan dump truck with two-meter arrows jutting from its rearmost rubber wheels.

".. Perfect, that was perfect. Thank you." Eno said.

"Let us hope that wasn't the breeze to start a hurricane."

"Just look ahead and see."

"I can't without warping the future. Anything unwritten would no longer follow uncertainty and natural progression-"

"Uh- Whatever." Eno shook her head. "Let's follow him, I didn't see what he does and so on until he ends up in a cafeteria."

She and the stubborn strange being, who did not sweat beneath the merciless sun, nor mind that he tread barefoot across ashefault roiling in cast off heat waves, sauntered at a leisurely pace near the marine Jake Sully. Across the rest of the landing strip, in the crowded atmospheric exchange chamber, down the bestir hall in the complex superior, nothing of exciting import took place. Unknowns talked briefly or at length with unknowns, the newcomers oozed both fear and hope, the sights and sounds were efficient and unique to a building that can be assaulted by multi-tonne mega fauna and yet were startlingly familiar to the hallways of Eno's school. Jake was mostly ignored, and didn't seem to notice it.

"Wow, these people are.. people." Eno hushed, as if anyone could hear her.

"You perceived them as otherwise? Vilified?"

"No... Well, some of them yes. But right now, seeing them trying to hide their nervousness like Daddy does when I'm sparring, they just seem like people."

"Perhaps your love for Sully temporarily blinded-" Bastion said as they reached the entrance to the mess hall.

"No, it's not like that. You wait and see, nothing here is one plus one..." Eno stared up and about her, entering a scene she'd memorized from a single viewing. "It's just so awesome to be here! Now no one can take this place from me."

Eno joyed, swinging her face up at the being with the power to bring her here. All the teeth of Bastion's thin lipped mouth shone as he grinned unabashed down to her, unable to remotely break the action when she blushed. Though weird, his affection was endearing.

They entered the yawning, human filled room. Within this cafeteria, at the opposite end of the central aisle, stood a man like no other. A soldier incarnate marred with three prominent facial scars and a curious accent, wars fought long ago in the glass of his eyes, and muscle about him undiminished with many decades of age.

"Get us closer, I love this speech." Eno ordered.

The two warped atop a table near the front where no idle hands were cast, watching the grizzled Colonel command the room.

"Hey! I don't remember that ugly guy." Eno pointed at a bald man with a falconine beak nose and the look of a slavic heritage. Something was uniquely off about him, indistinguishable to any singular detail, but undeniably different, and wrong. Eno shivered. "He wasn't in the scene! I'd remember, get him out of here; he gives me the creeps."

"He's in one of your uncle's works. It would please him if you'd remember to mention to him when you're back home, that you saw that man here."

"I don't like him." Eno said.

"Your uncle does create odd characters."

Eno palpably caught the double meaning. "But you're odd in a good way.."

A small correction of the list in Quaritch's stance indicated he was about to begin. "You're not in Kansas anymore..."

The anchor of the facility spoke, and continued to speak; giving a tough love lecture that fostered a stern sense of perseverance and pride into the peoples recently arrived, then detailed the rules as he saw them; of the planet and her surface organisms. Eno was enraptured.

"..Rule number three!.." Quaritch continued.

The protagonist too was effected in a positive way by the no-nonsense message being brokered, losing the small disquiet he'd fomented while getting to his lonesome position.

"This is day one. Day two thousand one hundred and ninety two will be here, but you focus on making it through, and your fellow man making it through, day one.. Until tomorrow." Quaritch scanned the silently breathing room that was his in admiration and high respect, looking right past the Bedouin child and the strange being as if they weren't there. "Dismissed."

"He's quite the orator, I like him." Bastion said.

"Colonel Quaritch is a man stuck in his past, he's the boss bad guy.. I'd say kill him now, buuut.. It couldn't be that simple, noooo..." Eno condescended theatrically.


End file.
